W. M. Piatt and Company completed the Durham City Water Works and reservoir, now called the Williams Treatment Plant, in 1917. The original filtration plant is a three-story brick Romanesque-Revival-style building with a one-story wing. The Club Boulevard trolley line took visitors to the reservoir and the trolley’s owners, the Durham Traction Company, promoted it […]
This photograph of the Carolina Theatre was taken shortly after it was completed in 1926, when it was known as the Durham Auditorium. The renowned Washington, D.C., architecture firm Milburn and Heister designed the building, with its elegant Beaux Arts façade. Opening on February 2 with the Kiwanis Jollies, it offered space for public functions […]
Durham’s second library, the Classical Revival structure pictured here, was completed in 1921 after library operations outgrew the original location at Five Points. The construction was made possible by the receipt of a Carnegie Foundation grant, which supplied $32,000 of the $59,000 needed to construct the new library on East Main Street. This highly sought […]
What Durhamites know as the Durham Arts Council Building on Morris Street was built in 1906 to house City High School (later Durham High). The school moved to a new, larger facility 1922. After major renovations, including the removal of the dome and pediment façade, city hall moved in and another building, the Carolina Theatre […]
The Durham County Detention Facility was constructed in 1996, built on the site of what was once the Austin-Heaton flour mill, and later, the Southern Railway Co. depot and office building. Before its construction, detainees were held on the upper floors of the Judicial Building and its jail annex. The building has an inmate capacity […]
Although the post office as an institution existed in Durham for decades, the first dedicated building was constructed in 1906. The first post office was a grand building, suitable for the booming town that had recently gained wealth and recognition due to its lucrative tobacco and textile industries. A new Neoclassical building on Chapel Hill […]
Durham County established a Department of Social Services in 1919. The department moved to the building pictured here in downtown’s Government Services District in 1966, where it was constructed on the site of Durham’s first YMCA. Guided by its mission to “partner with families and communities in achieving well-being through prosperity, permanence, safety and support,” […]
Pictured here are the grounds of the county home and prison farm, showing the main house and surrounding buildings and some of the inhabitants, overseen by armed guards. Members of superintendent Henry Daniel Leigh’s family stand at the far right. In 1881 Durham County purchased a tract of land on Roxboro Road to build a […]
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